Washington – Medtronic Inc., a maker of medical devices, lost its appeals court bid Monday to revive a $51 million jury verdict against BrainLab AG over image-guided surgical techniques.
Medtronic had won the case at trial, but a federal judge in Denver threw out the verdict. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the judge was correct to say BrainLab didn’t infringe four Medtronic patents. The ruling was posted on the appeals court’s website.
The dispute is over medical products that use acoustics to let surgeons track the precise location of instruments while they are in a patient’s body during operations. Medtronic claimed that BrainLab’s VectorVision, Kolibri, BrainSuite and ExacTrac products infringed its patents.
The judge’s decision to set aside the jury verdict was “well-reasoned,” the Federal Circuit said.
Officials with Minneapolis- based Medtronic didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
An outside spokesman for BrainLab had no immediate comment. Closely held BrainLab is based in Munich, Germany, with U.S headquarters in Chicago.
